Wulmaer

Trefor disappeared around sunrise.

At first, Wulmaer thought their companion had gone out to relieve himself, but when he and Macsen went looking for him, they found that his trail ended suddenly beside a urine-stained tree.

“Took to wing?” Macsen asked, glancing at the sky.

“Too many trees,” Wulmaer said, scanning the takeoff point. He took a deep sniff of the air. Despite being in the middle of a thriving, living forest, his nostrils picked up nothing at all. The lack of smell was a smell in itself, and immediately his hackles lifted. “Macs.”

“Yeah,” Macsen said, facing the way they had come. “I smell it too.”

“That’s a tszieni.” Memories trickled back, from the war.

“I know. Smelled the same thing around where that Ganlin was buried.”

Wulmaer glanced at the foliage around them, then up the piss-stained tree. “Can you climb that?”

Macsen gave the underbrush another look, then examined the tree. He placed his paws against the tree and his sheathed claws suddenly came to life, sinking into the bark with ease, making sap bleed forth from the pressure. Like a housecat scaling a willow, Macsen pulled himself up, paws splayed, forearms draped around the trunk in a hug.

Once he was halfway up, Macsen stiffened, his head looking to the southwest. “I see him.”

Wulmaer started in that direction. Behind him, Macsen released his grip and fell back to the ground heavily, making the underbrush shudder. “Don’t bother. He’s dead.”

Ice assailed Wulmaer’s soul, but he hunched his shoulders and went anyway.

Sure enough, Trefor’s body was ripped and battered, an entire swath of forest torn apart from his battle. His hands, thankfully, were still intact.

Staring down at it, neither Wulmaer nor Macsen spoke for some time. Finally, Macsen said, “It took two minutes for it to kill him.”

Wulmaer couldn’t speak.

“Think it’s that one that escaped the war?”

Wulmaer shook his head. “No. That tszieni wouldn’t have bothered picking him off. It would have killed us together.”

They stood there in silence for long minutes. Then, Macsen said, “I hope Aderyn sends reinforcements before the snows.”

Wulmaer nodded.

#

Cassia returned two days later, stumbling into their room as they slept, exhausted from another search for the tszieni. Both Wulmaer and Macsen lunged out of bed.

“They’re gone,” she gasped, collapsing to her knees on the floor at their feet. “The whole Citadel.”

Wulmaer frowned at her. “What?”

“Gone,” Cassia panted. “No one… Citadel…empty.”

Wulmaer swallowed, hard. Dropping to his knees, he took her head in his hands and made Cassia look him in the eyes. “Did Aderyn leave a note?”

Cassia shook her head, her many-faceted eyes bright with fear.

“You checked?” he demanded.

She nodded.

“Gods.” Wulmaer stood, glancing at the door. For several moments, he couldn’t speak. Then, softly, he said, “Cassia, you have to get to the Spyre. Find out if any of our kin still live.”

“Look at her!” Macsen snapped, padding between them. “She can barely move.”

Wulmaer lashed out at Macsen, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck, pulling him close. “Do you want to see the same thing happen to the Dyrian that happened to the Ganlins?”

The grounded Auldhund’s skin prickled under Wulmaer’s grip and he glared up at him defiantly. “You’re going to kill her if you send her out like that. At least let her get a night’s rest.”

“We don’t have time,” Wulmaer snapped. “Look at what’s happening, Macs! Whoever’s doing this… We’re playing right into their hands!”

“Then don’t you think they would have thought of that already?” Macsen said in a growl. “If something did happen to the Citadel, the Auldhunds at the Spyre are just as dead. Don’t send her alone. We should go together.”

“She goes,” Wulmaer said, pushing Macsen away. “She’s the fastest one of the group.”

“I’m fast!” Macsen said. There was a note of desperation to his voice, now. “Let me go, instead.”

“She can also stay out of sight and avoid the tszieni by staying aloft,” Wulmaer said. “You can’t.” He gestured at Macsen’s huge form. “Further, there is no way you could get through Siorus and into the Spyre unnoticed. She can fly in under cover of darkness.”

Macsen peeled his lips away from his teeth, exposing the jagged canines beneath. “I am a lot more deadly than you think, old man.”

“It’s okay, Macs,” Cassia said from the floor. She reached out and patted Macsen’s leg. “Calm down.” She had caught her breath again, and looked better, if shaken. “I’ll go.”

“No,” Macsen snapped. “Make him go.” He glared at Wulmaer. “He hasn’t stretched those wings of his in days.”

Cassia laughed, a pleasant bubbling sound. “Macs, he’d tumble from the sky at the first hint of a breeze. He might as well cut them off.”

Wulmaer wanted to contradict her, but he endured her statement in silence, hoping it would be enough to sway their companion.

Macs bared his teeth at Wulmaer again. “You’re playing right into their hands.”

“Macs…” Cassia said.

Macsen looked at her. Then, to Wulmaer’s surprise, he licked her, right across the beady, antlike eye. “You silly bug. Be safe.”

She laughed. “Aren’t I always, you troll?”

Macsen grunted, glanced back at Wulmaer, then shook himself and padded out the door.

Once he was gone, Wulmaer helped Cassia to her feet, for the first time allowing his worry for her to show. “You going to be able to handle this, lass?”

She gave him a grin that consisted of a slight opening of her bone-crushing mandibles. “I hope so. I’m real tired, but don’t tell Macs that. I’ll make it.”

“Good,” Wulmaer said. “Hurry. There’s a chance they haven’t killed those in the Spyre yet. We need to get to them before they do.”

Cassia took a deep breath, then nodded and followed Macsen outside.

Watching her pad into the coldness beyond, Wulmaer had a brief urge to call her back. Perhaps Macsen was right. Perhaps he should give her time to recuperate.

He stifled the urge. If any Auldhunds survived at the Spyre, they wouldn’t for long. With the winds in her favor, she could get there twice as fast as Macsen or him together. He listened in silence as she and Macsen made their goodbyes outside.

For the first time, Wulmaer suspected that they were lovers.

When Macsen padded back into the room, his green eyes fixed on Wulmaer and then slid away again with obvious disgust. “Coward,” he said, under his breath.

Wulmaer’s hands curled into fists. “What did you say to me?”

Macsen looked him in the eye. “Coward. We both know you could get there just as fast as her, as rested as you are. You just don’t like to fly.”

Wulmaer took a step toward Macsen, feeling the urge to throttle the youngster. “You’re letting your hormones make your decisions for you, boy. If I’d known you two were sharing a bed, I never would have brought you along.”

Macsen laughed. “She’s my sister.”

Then, disdainfully, Macsen padded from the room, leaving Wulmaer staring after him.

#

They caught the tszieni’s trail the next morning—big horse’s hooves dug into the treacherous, sandy banks encircling the mountain lake as it passed the inn, coming from the southwest, then continued on into the forests toward the mountains. Wulmaer and Macsen paid the innkeeper a spark to watch their things, then trotted off after it.

Macsen, loping at an easy gait, was easily twice as fast as Wulmaer, who had to make do on feet meant for grasping, not long-distance walking. It was obviously frustrating the grounded Auldhund, who stopped every ten minutes to wait in the distance, glaring back at Wulmaer as he attempted to catch up.

“Maybe if you spent more time flying, you wouldn’t be so bad at it,” Macsen said, as Wulmaer passed him after another long wait.

Wulmaer ignored him and kept trudging forward, picking his feet up high to keep his toes and talons from getting ensnared in the undergrowth.

“You know,” Macsen said, easily keeping pace with him, “The armsmaster would spend hours talking about you.”

Wulmaer gave him an irritated look and kept going.

“Spent every chance he could telling us about how great you were in the war, how you would rally your troops and fight off the Etroean soldiers even when the Aulds had given up. How Aulds and Auldhunds alike would die for you.”

Wulmaer ignored the youngster, keeping his attention on the ground.

“Frankly,” Macsen said, halting in front of him, “I don’t see what the big deal was about.”

Wulmaer stopped, glaring.

“You got Trefor killed in a day and a half,” Macsen said. “And you sent my sister off to do battle with the Aulds on a full three minutes’ rest.”

Wulmaer shook the accumulated moss and grasses off his talons and continued, moving around the youngling.

“As far as I can tell, you’re nothing but a puffed-up pigeon.” Macsen sat down in his path again. “Full of yourself.”

“Can we keep to the task at hand?” Wulmaer gritted. He awkwardly started moving past Macsen again, lifting his feet high.

“I don’t like the way you sent Cassia off like that.” Macsen blocked his path once more. “She was exhausted. She needed rest.”

“Dammit, boy!” Wulmaer snapped, dropping his feet back into the undergrowth in exasperation. “What’s done is done. Your sister will be fine.”

“Even if she is, how will she find us again?” Macsen demanded. “Even if she turns back now, she’s got just as much chance at finding a tszieni as she does at finding us.”

Wulmaer’s jaw was beginning to hurt from the pressure. “We have a monster to hunt. I don’t need an adolescent whining to me about his baby sister.”

“Elder, actually.”

Wulmaer could have strangled him. Instead, he gritted, “Get out. Of my way.”

Macsen reluctantly gave him right-of-way once more, though he continued to pace him easily. For several minutes, it looked as if the four-legged Auldhund would end the conversation and leave him in peace. Then: “I still can’t believe the way the armsmaster talked about you. Look at you. You can’t even walk properly.”

“That’s it,” Wulmaer snarled, turning to him. “Go with your sister.”

Macsen laughed.

“Now,” Wulmaer snapped. “I’ll take care of the tszieni myself.”

Macsen paused, considering. “I saw the way the thing tore up Trefor. You need my help.”

“I don’t need your help if you’re going to be an ignorant child too preoccupied with his personal affairs to realize that there are bigger issues at stake than your sister’s life.”

Macsen’s jaw dropped open.

“Now go catch up with her,” Wulmaer said. “I don’t want you hounding me. I can kill it alone. I’ve done it in the past, I can do it again.” He started walking again.

Macsen stayed where he was, watching him. To Wulmaer’s relief, he didn’t follow. He felt an automatic twinge of unease at the prospect of fighting a tszieni by himself, but forced himself not to look back.

As the hours passed, he began to get irritated as he stumbled along the tszieni’s trail, his footsteps impeded by brush that clutched at his toes. He hoped he found the lair soon. His hips were aching from the odd, mincing gait and the sheer act of walking was tiring him out. He’d spent the last forty years researching old scrolls and copying manuscripts in the Citadel, and the sheer physical effort of moving draining him dangerously. He didn’t know how much energy he’d have left to fight the tszieni, if he didn’t find it soon.

Then, a nagging thought tugged at his head. You were three hundred years younger when you fought the tszieni in the pass. You aren’t as spry as you once were, Wulmaer. What if it eats you?

“It won’t,” Wulmaer muttered to himself.

Still, when he stumbled across the monstrous burrow cut into the forest floor, nagging doubts assailed his mind. He could hear the tszieni snoring inside, sleeping away the sunlight.

Taking a deep breath, Wulmaer said a prayer to his ancestors and began to dig.

The tszieni woke halfway through, its snores halting suddenly as Wulmaer’s digging alerted it to his presence. The resounding silence that followed made the bristly hairs upon Wulmaer’s back stand on end, but he did not pause. Instead, he began to whistle marching tunes, a technique he had found to help ward off a tszieni’s eerie sense-deprivation.

“Thought you might like a little sunlight to liven up those wretched features of yours,” Wulmaer called down to it, between songs. “It’s a beautiful day, you know. Not a cloud in the sky.” He grunted, throwing back armful after armful of dirt. Below, he saw the tszieni’s front leg pull deeper into the shade when his excavations unearthed part of the den. A deep, bone-numbing growl began to emanate from the darkness below.

“Aw, come on out, love,” Wulmaer said, digging faster, now. “We have unsettled matters between us, you and I.”

The tszieni lunged from its den before Wulmaer was ready.

It shouldn’t have fazed him, since he knew it would be forced to attack sooner or later, but the uneven, brush-covered soil of the deep woods was not the same as the hard, rocky soil of the mountain pass.

Wulmaer’s hind toes caught under the brush as he stumbled backwards, tripping him.

For a split second, Wulmaer stared up at the tszieni, which was even then losing its hold on its souls in the daylight. They drifted away from it like a flickering colored steam, hundreds of different images slowly pulling free and rising into the trees.

Then the horselike creature stomped a huge hoof on Wulmaer’s chest and reached down to pluck his hand from the ground with jagged, meat-eater’s teeth. Wulmaer cried out as he felt the cold coils of the tszieni’s tongues wrap around his fingers and the stabbing pains as they pierced the skin at the beds of his talons. He shuddered at the unearthly tug as it began to suck. He slashed at the leg that held him with his free hand, tearing free huge strips of flesh, but the tszieni didn’t flinch in its feeding ecstasy.

Wulmaer suddenly felt off-balance, like everything within him was tilting, beginning to slide downhill. He scrabbled frantically for purchase, holding on despite the gentle, insistent tugging.

Not this way, he thought, frantically clawing at the tszieni.

The tszieni kept drawing at him, pulling him, calling him…

A big gray shape hurtled from the underbrush, hitting the monster full in the side. It released Wulmaer’s hand as it fell, its too-big eyes locating its attacker and its fang-filled head ducking to tear him apart.

“No!” Wulmaer shouted, sinking his claws into the thing’s head and dragging it away from Macsen, bodily holding it down with all of his five hundred pounds.

Still gripping the monster’s side, Macsen grunted around a mouthful of flesh. “Knew you couldn’t do it by yourself, old man.”

“Careful,” Wulmaer said, pinning the struggling head to his chest. “Don’t let your guard down, Macs.” All around them, the ghosts of men and beasts tore away from the monster, loosened by the sun.

“Yeah, right. Oh, look. It just sprouted another head out of its ass. Just like a pregnant—” Macs gave a grunt of pain. “Gods, I think it’s eating me.”

“Just hold on!” Wulmaer cried, feeling the tongues leak out of the tszieni’s mouth and latch onto his fingertips again. “The sun will take care of it.” His world shifted again as the tszieni once more began to suck the soul from his body. His arms lost their strength.

“And just how long will that take?” Macsen slurred. The youngster was losing focus too quickly.

“Macs!” Wulmaer snapped. “Stay awake! You can survive it, boy. Just hold in there. Let the sun do our work for us.”

“I dunno…” He heard the boy’s body slump to the ground. Wulmaer dared to look.

Macsen’s jaws had fallen free of the tszieni’s flank and he lay, tongue lolling, staring at the sky in a daze.

“Macs, goddamn it!” Wulmaer cried. “You prideful little twerp! You die on me and I’m gonna track you down in the afterlife and drag you back by the scruff of the neck.”

Macsen did not respond. He wasn’t breathing.

Already, the tszieni’s tugging was growing weaker, but not weak enough. Macs was going to die.

With his last of his strength, Wulmaer pushed the tszieni’s head away and grabbed the boy by the leg. He yanked as hard as he could, dragging his front paw free of the second, doglike head’s mouth.

Macsen took a shuddering breath.

Wulmaer collapsed, propped against the thing’s head, feeling his own hold slipping. The tszieni’s pull wasn’t strong, now, but Wulmaer had used up his reserves in helping Macs. Now he was failing. He closed his eyes, concentrating on staying still. Any motion at all made him feel as if his world were reeling. As if his mind were slipping…

For long minutes, the battle went on, with Wulmaer too weak to pull his hand free, and the tszieni too weak to finish him off.

With an effort of will, Wulmaer collected his wits, gathering the last of himself inside the little fortress he had created in his mind. Shove…off, he thought, so weak that the thought itself took an overwhelming effort. You…can’t…have me. Fade.

The tszieni suddenly went limp beneath him.

Wulmaer gasped as the tongues of darkness slipped free of his hand and the horse’s head slid to the ground. He immediately fell onto his back, staring at the sky.

Macsen came into his field of vision, drooling into the brush near his head.

“I get it now,” Macsen said softly.

Wulmaer closed his eyes.

Sharp talons dug into his shoulder. “Please stay awake, sir.”

Wulmaer blinked. Did he just call me ‘sir?’ He struggled to his elbows, his world heaving. Macsen watched him rise. Sure enough, Wulmaer saw the telltale signs of awe in the boy’s eyes.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Wulmaer muttered.

Macsen’s chest puffed out and he lifted his head higher. “Thought you might be getting a little too old for this.”

Wulmaer’s head snapped up and he glared.

Macsen deflated a little. “I mean, thank you sir.”

Wulmaer grunted, holding his head in an attempt to stop it from spinning. “Help me up.”

With Macsen’s assistance, he pulled himself to his feet. Together, they made their stumbling way back to the inn. Macsen, Wulmaer found to his delight, was not as steady on his feet as he wanted Wulmaer to think. He stumbled twice, grunting as he fell chest-first into the brush.

“We just need to sleep it off,” he told the youngster. “Just hold on there.”

Wide-eyed, Macsen said, “You’re sure? You’ve had this happen before?”

“Oh yes,” Wulmaer said, his jaw tightening. “More times than I’d wish to count.”

Macsen had nothing to say to that, though Wulmaer caught him giving him an appraising look when they stopped to rest and Macsen thought he wasn’t paying attention.

As soon as they got back to the inn, the innkeeper rushed up to them, delight on his ruddy face. “Sirs, I have good news! The creature you seek. A fisherman says he found it way down the shoreline. He says hoof-prints are everywhere.”

Macsen and Wulmaer looked at each other. “There were two?” Macsen asked.

Frowning, Wulmaer turned back to the innkeeper and said, “What kind of creature did the fisherman find?”